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Getting started with the Kinect for Windows SDK (from the community)

Description

With the release of the updated Kinect for Windows SDK there's a even more interest in building applications with it. Today's post, by Tobin Titus, is for you if you've been on the fence and would like a quick guide on getting started...

Kinect for Windows SDK

I read the other day that we released a new version of the Kinect for Windows SDK that is supported by Windows 8. With as busy as I’ve been working on IE10, I’ve been a bit of a slacker when it comes to trying new things so I decided that it was time to dive in and take a quick peak at what I could do with Kinect.

In a matter of a few minutes, I managed to play around a bit with the depth image sensors and the color image sensors. I also mucked around a bit with the elevation and accelerometer data. I’m not going to get fancy with this post so hang onto your hat and follow along. If you’re the one random guy that stumbles on this post and actually reads it and has questions, feel free to ask. I mean, I won’t know how to answer it, but you can always ask!

Here’ goes.

Purchase

There isn’t much sense in doing anything if you haven’t purchased a Kinect for Windows device already. I am very specific in stating Kinect for Windows. While there are some folks out there that provide you with the ability to use your Kinect for Xbox 360, I wouldn’t recommend it. Go get yourself one of these devices and we’ll all wait patiently till you come back.

[tapping foot]

Download/Install/Setup

Download and Install the Kinect for Windows SDK. Make sure you get the latest one from October 8th, 2012.

Plug your device into your computer and make sure to plug the power into the device. Plug and play is your friend here as there is nothing to install to make the device available.

Start Coding

Setting up your Form

...

Again, we are just doing validation to see if the last elevation is different from the current elevation. If it isn't, then we go ahead and move the sensor and update the current position.

All this should get you to a state where you can change the sensor elevation.

There's a lot more fun to be hand, but it took me longer to write this post than it did to write the code. I suspect you can take it from here faster than you could read my post. Happy coding!